shall be elected.  Almost half the Democrats here are for improvements; but they will vote for Cass, and if he succeeds, their vote will have aided in closing the doors against improvements.  Now this is a process which we think is wrong.  We prefer a candidate who, like General Taylor, will allow the people to have their own way, regardless of his private opinions; and I should think the internal-improvement Democrats, at least, ought to prefer such a candidate.  He would force nothing on them which they don’t want, and he would allow them to have improvements which their own candidate, if elected, will not.

Mr. Speaker, I have said General Taylor’s position is as well defined as is that of General Cass.  In saying this, I admit I do not certainly know what he would do on the Wilmot Proviso.  I am a Northern man or rather a Western Free-State man, with a constituency I believe to be, and with personal feelings I know to be, against the extension of slavery.  As such, and with what information I have, I hope and believe General Taylor, if elected, would not veto the proviso.  But I do not know it.  Yet if I knew he would, I still would vote for him.  I should do so because, in my judgment, his election alone can defeat General Cass; and because, should slavery thereby go to the territory we now have, just so much will certainly happen by the election of Cass, and in addition a course of policy leading to new wars, new acquisitions of territory and still further extensions of slavery.  One of the two is to be President.  Which is preferable?

But there is as much doubt of Cass on improvements as there is of Taylor on the proviso.  I have no doubt myself of General Cass on this question; but I know the Democrats differ among themselves as to his position.  My internal-improvement colleague [Mr. Wentworth] stated on this floor the other day that he was satisfied Cass was for improvements, because he had voted for all the bills that he [Mr. Wentworth] had.  So far so good.  But Mr. Polk vetoed some of these very bills.  The Baltimore convention passed a set of resolutions, among other things, approving these vetoes, and General Cass declares, in his letter accepting the nomination, that he has carefully read these resolutions, and that he adheres to them as firmly as he approves them cordially.  In other words, General Cass voted for the bills, and thinks the President did right to veto them; and his friends here are amiable enough to consider him as being on one side or the other, just as one or the other may correspond with their own respective inclinations.  My colleague admits that the platform declares against the constitutionality of a general system of improvements, and that General Cass indorses the platform; but he still thinks General Cass is in favor of some sort of improvements.  Well, what are they?  As he is against general objects, those he is for must be particular and local.  Now this is taking the subject precisely by the wrong end.  Particularity